Dark Corners
by KnightedRogue
Summary: There were dark corners to him that she had yet to breach. H/L post-ROTJ


Quick note: I don't know that any of this would qualify as a trigger warning. But there are references to some bad stuff in here, including drug addiction, child abuse, and manipulative relationships. Nothing is terribly explicit. Well, none of the _bad_ stuff is terribly explicit. But still, I'd rather warn you ahead of time.

Usual language warning apply. I am a fan of all the fucks that Han gives. :)

* * *

"Tell me about them," she said.

Naked, beautiful, unnervingly-awake Leia Organa. With hair that made her a downright fantasy depending on her mood. Eyes that saw too much of everybody. He cracked an eye open and took it all in: the hair, the eyes, those incredible lips …

"Han," she said. By her expression one would think he was inconveniencing her.

He swiped a hand over his face. "Yeah?"

He felt her knee slide up the inside of his, her arm smoothing over his chest. She rested her chin on his shoulder and he wrapped his arm around her, fingers brushing against her skin. She was like a canvas he wasn't allowed to touch. _You musn't degrade the art,_ he thought ruefully.

"Tell me about them," she repeated. "Your _others._ Your _befores._ "

"Why?" he asked, genuinely confused. Hadn't they had this conversation? The basics weren't a secret; he'd told her about the important ones. The rest were just trivia.

"Well," she said, sliding her fingers across his chest. "I'm curious."

 _Curious,_ he thought. "About what?"

She blinked. "The things you do to me. The way you _know,"_ Leia said, gesturing in the air beside her. She seemed embarrassed to have to explain it. "It has to come from somewhere. Somebody."

He pushed the back of his head into his pillow. "Leia - "

She shifted and he could feel her closer, now. Could feel her breath on his chin. "Han," she said. "Is there some reason you don't _want_ to tell me?"

He kept still, thinking. Finally, he sat up against the headboard of the bed and pulled the sheet over his waist. He felt uncomfortable talking to Leia, his living, breathing piece of canvas, about the worlds of people before her. He felt even more uncomfortable with his cock on full display while he did it. Leia shifted up the bed, wrapped the sheet over her breasts and propped her head on her hand. Her eyes scanned his face and he refocused on the ceiling above them.

"Growing up," he started, still not looking at her. "I was a tall kid. People assumed I was older than I was. And on the streets, and with Shrike, most people don't care how old you are. You're as old as you say."

The fact that he'd spent his childhood not knowing his _actual_ age bothered him. It was only after he left Shrike that he'd found his birth record. For some reason he couldn't admit that to Leia. For some reason, he didn't want her to know.

"One of the older girls, Shrike pimped her out some." A lot, actually. "Dalya. She had it rough with him. Got her addicted to spice. She'd fuck for it, come back, and cry."

A sound he'd never forget. Her makeshift bunk had been right next to his.

His stomach hollowed out and he turned his face down to look at those eyes, compassionate and empathetic. He thought about Leia, what she must have seen on Coruscant when she snuck out at night as an underaged senator. He knew she had been a little rambunctious; she'd told him ages ago. Nothing he was saying was particularly shocking to her, though she hadn't lived it, hadn't _had_ to live it.

"One night," he continued, "she came back without her credits. Shrike … well." Han clenched a fist. "Shrike roughed her up. I came in just as he was really getting going. Took a punch to the jaw and then knocked him into the bulkhead."

Han still remembered looking at Shrike's crumpled body and thinking he'd managed to kill the bastard. Rather than feeling liberated, he'd been terrified. Shrike had begun to climb back up and Han had grabbed Dalya's hand and fled into their side-by-side bedrolls. Han had always thought Shrike had been just too drunk to follow them.

"So Dalya - " Leia began for him.

"Yeah," Han said. "Yeah." Asked how old he was ("no _way_ you're fifteen, kid"), listened to him drone on about starships and the academy. It didn't happen that night; she had a black eye from Shrike and the customer who'd played for free had been pretty rough with her. But after a few days, after Han had healed from Shrike's revenge, Dalya had crept into Han's bedroll and -

"How old was she?"

Han looked down, struggling to remember and coming up blank. He shrugged.

Leia rose up on one hand, letting the sheet fall from her artwork breasts. She kissed him sweetly. He tickled his fingertips down her spine and smiled when her lips left his. "Tell me what she taught you," Leia said, lips just a hair away from the side of his mouth.

He tried to remember; it was a foggy memory. It felt like a lifetime ago. "Kissing," he said after a moment. "The mechanics of sex. She wasn't … her customers weren't real concerned about her coming."

It occurred to him now that she had been, in some ways, just as inexperienced as he had been.

"So your first time - " Leia prompted him.

" - wasn't much different from most boys'," he finished. "Fast. Unimpressive."

Like a business transaction. Rewarded for service. Exactly how Dalya thought of sex.

Leia sat back. "What happened to her?"

"Dunno," Han said, reaching out and twisting a lock of her hair around his finger. "She didn't come back one day. It always kind of ate at me."

Part of him wanted to say that it had really disturbed him, this poor girl just disappearing into thin air. He wanted to say that he had thought of her often when he'd come across poor wretches that looked like her on the streets. But he wasn't downplaying it for Leia's sake: it only ever _kind of_ bothered him. Kids went missing: addicts especially. It wasn't his business to ask questions and though her crying had disturbed him, it had been only one drop in an ocean of disturbing realities.

Now, though. _Now_ it disturbed him. He looked back to Leia, warm eyes regarding him with trust and that beautiful darkness that he loved so much. And his mind spiraled into an alternate universe where young Leia was sold to a man like Shrike, where she had to fuck to survive, where the spice was the only thing that really mattered to her. His throat closed up and his chest felt tight.

This happened to him sometimes, when his past and his present flew toward each other with such insane velocity he wasn't quite sure which was which. He didn't think Leia truly understood how much she meant to him. She knew he loved her, sure. But when he thought about family, when he thought about goodness in the firmest sense of the word, he thought of her. And though he was a confident man, a man who owned his past and wore it like a badge of honor, he wanted to ignore this part. He wanted to ignore the pain of his childhood. He wanted to forget it ever happened, while at the same time celebrating it for making him the man he was now.

"I'm sorry," Leia said, pulling him back to her. She had probably guessed he'd gone somewhere dark. He knew she suspected he had thoughts like these. Every once in awhile she would say something perceptive and he'd think that Jedi heritage or no, Leia could read him like a book.

"It was a long time ago," he said, but he gathered Leia up to his chest. Warm skin pressed against his and the vice on his chest eased off. He wrapped his hand in her hair and felt her legs shift against his. In some ways, how she was sitting on him was comforting: in others, it was a little too warm, a little too intimate. Part of him wanted space for this conversation. He felt like his fingertips were leaving dirt trails all over her back.

"Everything else I picked up along the way," he said.

Leia tucked her lips under his jaw and pushed her left hand into his hair. "Mmm-hmm," she murmured into his skin. Her voice had dropped in tone and now Han was thrown back into a familiar heavy state of arousal that tugged on his skin like fire. He bit back a groan, knowing it was exactly what she was going for. He wasn't hard yet but it was only a matter of time if she kept that up. She swept her lips up to his ear, kissed it, and then asked: "And your tongue?"

He jerked back and Leia followed, running her tongue along the shell of his ear. He slid his hands to her hips, mostly to keep her astride him because every time she leaned against him to get to his ear, she rubbed her sex all over his. "My tongue?" he breathed, not entirely sure what she was asking.

"Your tongue is a well-trained instrument, General Solo," she whispered in his ear. "Tell me. Who gave you that stellar training?"

"Picked up a few tricks here and there," he said, confident he hadn't really answered her question. He was just throwing words out there to keep her heat pressed up against him.

"Stop being obstinate," she demanded.

Han closed his eyes and chuckled. "I'm not being _obstinate_. It's not like I had royal tutors. Who taught _you_ to use your tongue the way you do?"

"You," she replied automatically.

"Nuh-uh," he murmured, still squeezing her hips. " _That_ ain't the whole story."

She rolled her eyes and slid to his side. He rolled half on top of her, wrapped an arm around her waist, turned his head and kissed her shoulder. He was certain she wasn't actually annoyed at him; her left hand ran over his forearm and she had a thoughtful look on her face. When she spoke again, it was quiet. "Raal Panteer. Mostly you," she nudged his shoulder with her nose, "but Raal first."

He'd figured, of course. But it was good information to have. "So you _did_ have a royal tutor."

She laughed out loud and turned to face him, on their sides, their legs braided together. His hand rested on the small of her back. "The Panteers weren't royalty," she corrected him. "So I had a tutor of … substantially high breeding."

He grinned. "Like a pet."

"Everyone is my pet," she arched an eyebrow at him.

That confidence. The command in her voice. She wondered why he didn't want to talk about his past? Brilliant woman should have figured it out by now.

He kissed her because he loved it when she got fiesty. He slipped his tongue against hers and lingered at her bottom lip. When he pulled away, her lips were parted and wet. Her eyes glinted at him, knowing he was about to divulge the information she wanted.

He wished he didn't find that smirk so fucking irresistible.

He sighed. "There was a girl named Mila. She was co-pilot for a freighter along the Perlemian Trade Route. We had a few good nights."

"And I can thank her for that tongue of yours?"

"You can thank _me_ for that tongue of mine," he growled. "But she was vocal about what she wanted, yeah."

'Vocal' was being kind. Mila didn't like cocks, not really. She had an on-again-off-again arrangement with her captain, a woman that Han had adamantly avoided when he could. He had known that he was Mila's rebound but it hadn't mattered. Those two women were both grown adults, they could fuck up whatever relationship they had without him worrying over it. And Mila had been beautiful and tragic in her own way, something about a teenaged lover and an abandoned, sick mother. He hadn't asked many questions.

He'd left the academy by then, had his own share of self-loathing to deal with. Taking on someone else's was not in his nature. It had been one of the first times he'd purposefully used someone, too. He'd felt awful afterwards, but the desperate desire to escape was so strong in the underground. Everyone did it. It was a form of survival.

He shook his head. "She would scratch. Had these long nails and she'd use them. So I learned quickly to do it right the first time."

Leia clucked her tongue. "Such a scholar," she said. "Knowledge for safety's sake."

He slid the hand on her lower back down to her upper thigh, fluttered his fingers there softly. "Pursuit of knowledge," he said, and ducked his head to nibble on her earlobe. "For the advancement of humankind."

"How noble," she chuckled. Han closed the space between them, those scant few millimeters, until his skin was flush with hers. The most incredible skin shifting against him: breasts, biceps, abdominals. Her thigh slid against the side of his leg like she could temper his addiction by surrounding him with his drug of choice. Being wrapped up in Leia-skin was the best form of overdose he could possibly imagine.

But Leia was on a mission. She wasn't going to be distracted.

She smiled at him when she ducked away from his lips. "So we have Dalya and Mila. I know about the mechanic - "

Han nodded.

"And the woman we don't talk about," Leia continued. "Also with an _a_ at the end of her name. You have a fetish, it seems."

Han scowled. The woman in question was exactly the reason he didn't want to have this conversation. If Han Solo had learned treachery from anyone, it was from Bria Tharen.

In the long history of people who'd used him, she took the cake. Never before or since had he met someone who couldn't _help_ but be manipulative. She learned it young, of course, through the spice trade. There had been something so intransigent about her lies, as if they were a coping mechanism that she just wouldn't give up. The only time he'd truly felt he could trust her was when she was lying naked in front of him. Even at the time, he'd felt safer with his clothes on and hers off.

That dynamic had turned into a nasty habit that he was still trying to suppress.

"Were you ever with someone who left you?"

He refocused. "Besides the woman we don't talk about?" Han asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Leia looked at him a moment. She leaned in and kissed him, a soft, gentle kiss, very different from their usual activities in this bed. When she moved her head away, she settled into his neck again, her forehead pressed into his carotid artery. His arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders.

"Besides _her_ ," she said. Her voice held an echo of his anger over sick, insane Bria. Leia's vicarious rage did wonders for his mood.

"Ah," he said, playful, thinking. "One left a note on my datapad and stranded me on Velga."

Leia laughed. He felt her her body shake beside him. "Is that the proper way to be rid of you? I've been doing it wrong all these years - "

" _Shut it,"_ he growled, tugging on the ends of her hair. "One proposed to me."

"Oh _no,_ " Leia said, a smile still on her face. "Poor woman should have known better."

"She should have consulted _you_ ," Han said, imagining Salla Zend and Leia Organa in the same room together. "What would you have told her to do?"

"Hmm," Leia tilted her head and pursed her lips appraisingly. "I would have suggested she rescue you from carbonite. Worked for me."

 _Oh, Leia,_ Han thought. A political prodigy who still believed he fell in love with her because she risked her life to go after him on Tatooine. For someone who read people for a living, she sure as hell had no clue about that. "Worked for you," he agreed, amused.

He'd been a lost cause for her _years_ before that. He just wasn't about to tell her so.

"And this?" Leia slid her hand from his shoulder, down, sweeping past pectorals and setting a wide course over his stomach, past each hipbone and to the currently fully-engaged erection at her thigh.

"Yours," he groaned. She pressed the heel of her hand up the bottom ridge and he thought for a moment that he'd passed out.

"Yes, I know," she murmured. "But I was wondering where you learned to use _this_ so effectively."

Han was having trouble stringing coherent thoughts together. Her slightest grip made him want to curse in every language from every cantina he'd ever visited. But he swallowed back the automatic response and pulled himself together. He couldn't quite stop the roll of his hips against her hand, though. "Mostly that is me barely hanging on while you torture me."

She pulled back from his ear, but kept her hand against him. "Torture?"

And that _look._ The not-quite naive look in her eyes as she mouthed the word again. She was trying to play it off as a joke but the concern in her eyes was very real. He kissed her lips, then her cheek, and finally her forehead even as her hand pressed against him again. "Sometimes," he admitted. "You don't always know."

She brow furrowed. "I torture you?"

Wrong word, he suddenly realized. The absolute worst word he could have said. Anything else would have been less damaging than that one. But despite the drama of the ill-chosen word, the sentiment was absolutely true. "Leia."

She slid her hand from his cock back up to the center of his chest just above his heart. "I am just playing."

He shook his head. "Don't apologize. That's not what I meant."

 _Torture._ He'd done some idiot things while in bed with her; she inspired a kind of awe in him that he didn't demonstrate much and it messed with his brain. But using that word, bringing that concept into their sex life ... that was a particularly virulent brand of stupid.

They'd both been tortured. It wasn't something either one of them liked to dwell on. "Stop it," he ordered, grabbing her hand and pulling it back down to where it had been. "What I _meant_ is that I have a few evasive maneuvers that I use when in bed with you. To keep from coming," he clarified.

"I know what you meant," she mumbled. Her head was tilted down. All he could see was her hair.

He started to ramble, words spilling out in a rush to get her to look at him again. "Smashball stats, shield specs on the _Falcon,_ nav calculations and lightspeed plots …"

It worked. She arched an eyebrow at him. He was relieved to see that awful look disappear. "Really."

It was not a question. It was a dare.

" _This_ ," he squeezed her hand pressed against him, "is so effective because I've spent a lot of time waiting for you." He meant it literally, in bed.

But there. That was what he had meant to say. And judging by the way she was looking at him, it had been what she needed to hear. "You are very good at waiting for me," she whispered. He wasn't sure why that seemed to fix everything, but he'd learned a long time ago to take whatever victories he could when he went up against the woman in his arms.

She craned her neck to kiss him slowly, taking her time, closing her eyes. Her hand shifted under his to squeeze his cock rhythmically, the pace slow but the intent clear.

He growled her name when she broke their kiss to breathe against his lips. She smiled and he kissed her again, tilting her head back, pressing a hand to the back of her head to keep her close. He felt hot, aggressive, proud. His hand was still lying against hers and he could feel the movement of her hand as she squeezed him. He had difficulty slowing himself down when he felt like this, when she sparked in him such a desire to possess, to claim.

Because sex with Leia, fucking Leia, loving Leia … none of that was about possession.

He'd experienced sex as a form of possession. He'd been selfish and he'd been uncaring. He knew how that felt from both sides. And he didn't want it anywhere near Leia, he didn't want her to ever feel that sick, awful feeling after being used. He didn't want that stain from Dalya's sad, resigned eyes or Mila's vengeful, hateful smile. He didn't want her to ever question who he was or what he wanted. He wanted Leia laughing, he wanted her overcome, he wanted her playful and dominating and just so fucking _loved_ that it never even occurred to her to want anything else.

He wasn't protecting her from himself. He loved that he inspired her adventurousness in the same way she inspired his awe. He _loved_ that. Her independence, her bravery, her brilliant rebelliousness so like his own.

She was his work of art.

He tried so hard to keep their bed free of the sins of his past. For her and for him. He didn't want that stain, either. He wanted it wiped out. He wanted redemption from what he'd done in the past - not the _acts,_ per se, but the black hole of apathy that went along with them.

He rolled her to her back, hand still under her head but the one behind her thigh switching to press against her from the front. He sat up, separating his torso from hers, and looked at the unparalleled view in front of him: naked, beautiful, unnervingly-awake Leia Organa, hands gripping the sheets beside her, hair fanned out against her pillow. She quickly coated his fingers and he twisted his hand to slide a finger into her. She bit her lip and threw a hand into his hair.

He knew that was a good sign, but he also knew that they'd already had sex tonight. She was capable of multiple orgasms, but it took her a little longer to come the second time, even with time between. Keeping his hand where it was, he leaned back over and nudged her nose with his. "Princess," he said. "I'm gonna need you to talk to me here."

Her eyes flew open. She glanced between his eyes and then his hand below, steadily thrusting into her. "I think you're doing fine on your own," she said, looking back up at him.

"Of course I am." He smirked. "But I'm taking my cues from you. Don't hold back on me."

She smiled widely, nodded once, and then pressed down on his head. He laughed and took the hint, pulling his hand away from her and running his lips down a similar meandering path as she had done with her hand earlier. He kissed her collarbone and ran his wet finger up her stomach to her right breast, carefully circling her nipple. She sighed as his tongue ran a reverse path over the wet trail, gliding down her ribs, stopping to nibble at her hipbone. He felt her knees bend slightly against his side, and he wrapped his right arm around her left leg as he descended.

"Han," she breathed above him, her hand still in his hair. He looked up at her and the utter surreality of the moment caught him off-guard. A year together and he still couldn't get over her voice when she said his name like that. He kissed her inner thigh in response but waited for her to finish her thought. After a moment, she looked at him with mischief in her eyes and said, so superior that he couldn't keep a straight face: "Best put that training to good use."

He didn't dignify that with a response and instead pressed his lips against her. Training or no training, this was not something that ever became rote. His tongue, his lips, the pads of his fingers: every part of him knew it's play, but the order differed. Sometimes Leia needed him to be gentle, sometimes she needed him to be less so. It depended on a spectrum of factors.

His greatest ally was Leia herself, who took his request to heart and talked him through it.

"Yes," she murmured, once he'd found his rhythm. Her voice rang out in their bedroom, encouraging. He kept his tongue on her clit, curled his fingers to stroke her where she wanted him to. She said his name again and dropped her hand from the back of his head. She ran her fingertips over the nape of his neck, up behind his ear and against his jaw. Such a contrast, he thought. One clawed and tore his skin, the other invited him in.

This was taking it's toll on him, though. _Torture_ was an exaggeration, he admitted, but this image and these sounds: they were a prelude to sensations for which he was desperate. Watching her go through her stages of orgasm, from her soft smile to her unencumbered, unfettered pleasure, it forced him to slow his pace.

He wanted her _now_. He wanted to feel the same. He wanted her to come again, though he doubted he could manage that. He was hard and he just didn't think he had it in him to take the time he knew he needed to make her come on him like he had originally planned.

Ah, but Leia really _could_ read him like a book. Her hand swept back up to his ear and tugged twice. He looked up to her smile. "Good?" he checked, because though he knew she'd come he liked to hear her say it. He _loved_ to hear her say it. As loud as she could.

Leia laughed and swept a hand into her hair. He hadn't noticed but it looked to him like she'd been playing around with it with her other hand. "Good," she said.

He quirked an eyebrow at her and began a slow crawl up her body.

"Do I need to stroke your ego any more?" she wondered. "You're the one with all the experience. What would you prefer? Fantastic?"

He nodded, kissing her jaw.

"Mmm. Mind-blowing?"

"Better," he said, rising up further so that their hips aligned.

Before he could go any further, he felt her tip her head up and run her hand up the side of his face. He glanced back down at her. He'd figured their little banter was over.

"Perfect," she said, totally serious. Her eyes were wide and the usual jaded sarcasm in her eyes was noticeably absent.

She wondered why she was different than everyone else he'd been with? Because no one in the galaxy had ever looked at him like that. Like he meant something to her. Like he'd earned her entire respect. Like she saw everything he'd done and rather than dismissing it or blowing it off, she celebrated it. Like she loved him _because_ of it.

He'd never tell her any of this. He'd never be _able_ to. He never _wanted_ to be able to. She might not even believe it if he did.

So he showed her. He'd give her anything she wanted. Anything.

"Of _course_ I'm perfect," he said as he pressed inside her. He watched her head tilt back, watched the movements of her throat. Leia overwhelmed was one of the few sights in the galaxy that never got old to him. Talk about a work of art.

He set a quick rhythm since he knew the pressure was off him. How exactly do you improve on perfect, after all? She kept him close, her arms wrapped around him like she was hanging on for dear life. He was too tall to tuck his head into her neck in this position, so he pressed his lips to her temple, feeling the tight coil in his stomach pull.

He focused on slick sensation. He focused on her soft moans. Nothing felt better than this, not ever, not _once._ Scores of people, of every type, design, persuasion, obliterated. Nothing, nothing, nothing. He'd chase this feeling forever. He'd chase _her_ forever. _Fuck._

The coil snapped.

Electricity ran through his body. From the hair on his head to the bottom of his feet, he felt it. He fell to his side and kept his eyes closed, though he felt Leia turn with him. The first things he felt after he came back to himself were her hands, softly stroking his shoulders. Then her lips at his collarbone. Then her feet, wrapped around his calves. Then, finally, the air of the room, the sheets beneath him.

And then her eyes again. "Good?" she asked playfully.

Good? After a lifetime of the fucking dregs? After being used, after using other people? Was this good?

"Perfect," he answered.

* * *

If you like these two, you can read more about them in "Mighty Things".

And if you read this because you're a current reader of "Mighty Things", I hope you enjoyed this peek into the "dark corners that Leia couldn't breach". Thank you for sticking with me through the space battles. :)


End file.
